


The Tale of Dan's Sad Beard

by iris_ophelia



Category: Veep (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 14:38:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14717993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iris_ophelia/pseuds/iris_ophelia
Summary: The tale of Dan’s short-lived sad beard that Amy liked just a little too much. (Season 3, Episode “Debate”)





	The Tale of Dan's Sad Beard

Two weeks after London, she texts him.

She is not worried about him, not even a little, but, she misses him just the slightest bit at work. She has no one to commiserate with other than Ben, and she misses making faces at him when stupid ideas are brought forth to the table.

After all, she now is the campaign manager and it’s probably not even that she really misses him, rather just needs his conniving brain. She convinces Selina that they need to bring him back to the communications team because Mike is drowning, but makes sure that Gary devises the asking through Selina—Amy **does not** want Dan to know it was her doing. She hears Gary in a not-so-subtle whisper to Selina that Dan can probably return after New Hampshire.

Then, she sends the text.

_If you don’t stop being a whiny bitch and get your ass to New Hampshire, you’re going to be more toxic than a nuclear waste dump._

It takes a few hours, but he eventually texts her back.

_So much anger and aggression, I would think that you miss me or something._

She ignores the text; she is too busy planning for the debate and decides to hire a guy she knew from graduate school to help with communications because she does not know if Dan will actually show up in New Hampshire. And if Jackson has always been a little bit sweet on her, she does not mind that either. Since she and Ed broke up, she has not fucked anyone and really needs to release some tension. Jackson is eager to please her, and he may be a bit dull and geeky, but would probably at least give her an orgasm.

And then Dan shows up at the campaign office on the first day of debate prep and she carefully does not look at him as he walks up to Mike. He has grown a sad beard and she lifts her eyes to stare at it for just a moment, because she’s tense and anxious and all she can think about it how wonderful Dan’s sad beard would feel against the inside of her thighs.

He asks if he can get anyone anything as he walks through the offices in his new “Zen” state, but is sure to lift his eyebrows with a little smile before passing by her. She hears Selina tell him to get rid of the beard and Amy feels relief inside, because she does not have time to think about Dan and his sad beard.

Day one of debate prep does not go completely horribly. Jackson is slightly disappointing, but no one seems overly concerned. Dan however, has been relatively quiet and useless (other than attempting to find out more details about Thornhill’s affair), and every time she flicks her eyes subtly towards him, he seems to be gently rubbing his sad beard and looking down at his phone. Selina leaves to go back to the hotel, and the rest of the staff ends up a local watering hole to absorb as much whiskey as possible. Jackson, of course, plops next to Amy at the bar and buys her drinks, and she carefully does not look for Dan.

After her fourth whiskey, she excuses herself to go to the bathroom. It’s far off towards the back of the room, away from the bar and in a random back hallway by the kitchen. When she leaves the bathroom a few minutes later, the liquor flowing through her veins, she stumbles right into Dan and his sad beard in the back hallway. He puts his hands on her hips to steady her and smiles down at her, “Ames.”

She rolls her eyes, but is just tipsy enough to have less of a filter and her walls down just a bit, and gently touches his beard with her fingers, “You grew a sad beard.”

He continues to smile at her, “Yup. Selina wants me to get rid of it.” Amy continues to touch it gently, his hands still on her hips while he whispers in her ear, “Do **you** want me to get rid of it?”

Her heart is pounding and her head is spinning (from alcohol and arousal) and she cannot think of a single thing at that moment except Dan’s beard rubbing against her skin. So, she does the most illogical thing she can think of: she grabs his face and kisses him and feels the prickliness of his beard against her cheek, and it feels so good because she hasn’t felt anything except stress for months (even when Ed was fucking her). He pushes her a little further down the hall into a dark corner and she opens her mouth, inviting his warm tongue against hers. He pins her against the wall, pressed hard against her body, and she lets out a little sigh as his beard slowly scratches against her jawline while he kisses up towards her ear.

“Fuck,” she moans.

He bites her sensitive ear and whispers, “I didn’t know that all I needed for you to jump me was some scruff.”

She pulls her head away, banging it against the wall and he continues to grip her hips and chuckle in her ear. “I just… I just wanted my head to stop spinning with everything for a minutes.” He looks down at her a little more seriously and with a little less jest, prompting her to continue, “I mean, well, it’s just a lot and Selina’s… she’s not… well, you know.”

He seems to have a sudden sensitivity that she has never seen (she tells herself it must be the happy pills, that’s the only explanation) and grazes her cheek, “Yeah, I know.” He presses his mouth against hers again, slightly softer, and she revels in the sad beard against her face, because it makes her feel something other than tense and stress and wanting to explode. And then he pulls away and rests his forehead against hers while she closes her eyes.

“Your puppy dog is waiting at the bar,” he says, teasing her.

“Ugh, you had to fucking ruin it, didn’t you?” she asks, pushing him away. She straightens out her skirt and shirt, and starts to walk away from him, when she feels him gently grab her wrist, “Ames, just, don’t… try to not let it all get to you.”

She looks at him questioningly, but then understands what he’s saying and returns to the bar.

She sees Jackson talking to Catherine, who is awkwardly flirting with him after drinking lots of tequila, and he doesn’t seem to hate it. Amy sighs and realizes even if she did let him fuck her tonight, he wouldn’t be capable of lighting her up with an orgasm no matter how hard he tried, because he didn’t have the sad beard effect that had the potential to ignite a carnal urge inside of her after five minutes of kissing. Instead, she settles at a table top for one more drink with Ben, Furlong, Kent and Doyle, and a few minutes later, Dan slides onto the stool next to her. She carefully nurses her last whiskey, and **does not** look at him (and **does not** look at him), but his knee begins to gently knock hers from underneath the table, and she does not take a deep breath every time the fabric rubs against her ever so sensitive skin beneath the hemline of her skirt.

And then she sees Catherine snuggle up to Jackson at the bar and rub her fingers against his neck and Amy thinks, _‘Fuck, I’m going to have to fire you after the debate you idiot. You don’t fuck the first daughter without getting the axe.’_ In her periphery, she sees Dan smirking because he’s watching too, and he starts to chuckle when he watches Catherine sloppily attack Jackson’s neck. She elbows him and narrows her eyes, “Stop laughing!”

He continues to laugh, but the rest of the table is so absorbed in party gossip they don’t even notice. And then she starts to smile, because she knows that Jackson is exactly the puppy dog in need of love and femininity and sweetness that was everything Amy was not. Dan leans in close to her ear, extra careful to be sure that his sad beard just barely scratches her ear and whispers, “He really is the epitome of a tiny kitten who just needs someone human love, even if it’s from the most attention-seeking and boring twenty-two-year-old to grace this planet.” She gives him a pointed look as he pulls away from her ear.

“Well you win some, you lose some,” she chugs the rest of her whiskey. “I’m heading to bed,” she announces to the table, saying pleasantries to the rest of the men, and subtly (but not really subtly), placing a soft finger against Dan’s cheek, “Get some beauty sleep handsome.”

And she saunters off, moving her hips in a slightly more exaggerated manner as she makes her way outside to walk the two blocks back to the crappy hotel they’re staying in. When she gets to her hotel room, she cannot find the keycard in her purse (which she lovingly refers to as the big black hole of doom). Finally, after about two minutes, she finds it shoved in a random pocket and tries to open the door, consistently getting the red light.

“Ugh, fuck you so much right now,” she moans leaning her head against the door.

“Really, I thought it would take more than a room key,” she hears Dan whisper into her ear.

She turns around to see Dan smirking down at her. “And, just what do you think you’re doing?” she asks him.

He grabs the key card from her hand and inserts it into the door behind her, grinning even wider when he sees the green light, and starts to push her backwards inside, “I thought that was obvious Ames.”

She breathes deeply, trying to play his game and not seem affected by his presence, “I don’t remember inviting you in here.”

He pushes her against the back of the door once they’re in the room and begins to hike her skirt up. “Hm, really, because I thought you might want to feel my scruff somewhere before I shaved it off?” He trails his fingers slowly up her thigh and she bangs her head against the back of the door, closing her eyes. She feels his fingers stop at the edge of her underwear and she opens her eyes to see him smirking at her. “Is there a problem Ames?”

She grabs his face and looks him square in the eyes, “Listen asshole, I’m only doing this because I feel bad for you, not because I really want to or anything.”

He chuckles and rubs his beard against her neck as he places kisses all over her skin. “Okay, you tell yourself that.” And then he slips a finger beneath her underwear and no more coherent sentences come out of her mouth for the next hour.

*

Dan shows up at day two of debate prep with his sad beard still intact. Selina scolds him and tells him it better be gone by the next day for the debate. He reassures her that it will be, all while keeping subtle eye contact with Amy across the table.

This time, Amy shows up at his room after debate camp, reminding him she’s only there because she pities him. He rolls his eyes and pulls her in, and she finally relaxes with his face buried deep in her pussy while she grabs his hair roughly.

She goes to sneak out at 5:30am because she accidentally fell asleep in post-coital bliss, but he grabs her before she can roll of bed and fucks her good, reminding her the sad beard is disappearing soon.

When she sees him before the debate, all clean-shaven and smooth skin, she flutters her eyes downward carefully not looking at him. His sad beard is gone and she is semi-relaxed, or at least, less tense, so the sad beard served its purpose and they will go back to ‘normal’.

After the debate, she can barely look at Jackson. Between fucking Catherine and his horrible “three R’s”, she is almost looking forward to firing him as a way to relieve the newly developed tension after the debate.

She shakes her head, “I do not know what I saw in you.”

Dan appears and smirks, staring directly at Jackson, “I do. He’s a less talented, ugly version of me.”

He turns his head, raises his eyebrows at her and walks away.

She berates herself internally. She will definitely feel his smooth shaven face against her skin tonight, but only tonight. Tomorrow, the sad beard and Dan will be forgotten.


End file.
